Temperatures Rising: Top Art Picks Heating Up the Weekend

Last week’s openings got us all hot and bothered, literally. Summer weather came back just as it was expected to end—and it’s due to the Bushwick art scene heating up (so it’s not just global warming, guys). From Valentine Gallery to Schema Projects and onto Outlet, as the temperature gets ready to fall, the suart heats up this weekend in Bushwick!

We first heard about this show back in May during a studio visit with painter Rebecca Norton at The Active Space. While exploring abstraction through personal and mythological inspirations inside her studio, Rebecca’s works for Armature came about when observing early morning light, drawing intimacy from it and documenting the inanimate and further abstracting it.

Set further from Bushwick’s industrial landscape yet embracing that very subject matter with its latest show, Valentine Gallery re-opens after the summer with “New and recent paintings by David Brody and Cindy Tower with Liz Ainslie.” Detailed industrialism is captured in selected works from Cindy Tower’s “Workplace Series,” contrasted against David Brody’s structural paintings in hues of magenta, turquoise and yellow. Subject matter begins to abstract with Liz Ainslie’s geometric works of shape shifting patterns and loose structures.

With some patriotic flair and tune-inspired works, Schema Project's “Purple Mountains, Amber Waves”—a nod to “America the Beautiful”—covers landscape works by nine artists and their vision of the landscape today. Atmospheric perspective and the idea of how we treat our lands now and in the past are considered as these artists find solace and soul in nature. Scott Espeseth depicts his home in the upper Midwest, “rarely wild, more often something planned and planted.” Jeanne Tremel becomes part of the scenes she captures, “conversing with the water, rock and atmosphere.” Fred Valentine of nearby Valentine Gallery draws on his memory of living on 350 acres of pond, field and forest in a commune along the Illinois/Wisconsin border. His time spent here dates back to the 70’s and 80’s, so with a “pinch of hallucination” his memories of weather, land and sound are revisited.

Rachel Gorchov, "Making Strange" at TSA New York (Image courtesy of the artist)

Landscape inspiration is carried over at TSA New York with “Rachael Gorchov: Making Strange,” as environments and public spaces are highlighted to bring elements that are hidden into plain view. Hidden elements like “the idiosyncratic, romantic, picturesque, calming, ominous, daydreamy, imaginary and secret” ask to be spotted. The paintings also ask to be explored by tilting your head or craning your neck, distracting from themselves and creating a disorienting experience—thus “making strange.”

Balancing the phenomenal, the analytic, and the intuitive, Colin Thomson creates compositions from a combination of graphics and indigenous patterns for “Plot Lines” at Outlet. With cartoon references and peculiar forms, a playful investigation comes into play between figure and ground, color and drawing. There are no novelties, gimmicks, or tricks at play in Matthew Deleget’s works in “False Positive.” His paintings of industrial enamel spray paint on wood are direct and matter-of-fact, set up as broken-panel monochrome pieces with broken and splintering parts across the surface.

Not afraid of forcing unrelated mediums to coexist, Leah Tracha combines photographs with paint and glazed ceramic, forming sculptures that signify her freedom and evolution in her approach to materials. These sculptures become like functional objects with an intuition and freedom all their own, celebrating their strangeness and formed autonomy.

Sebastian Vallejo in "Supermacho" at The Active Space (Image courtesy of the artist)

Spatial installations, performance remnants and painterly abstractions take over The Active Space in “Supermacho.” A group of eleven artists come together as “surrogates in a spectrum of subjectivities and gendered hysterias.” Exploring the boundaries between seriousness and exuberance, and taking inspirational cues from the cryptic works of Berlin-based sculptor Isa Genzken, this group of artists directly confront formality in deliberate, self-conscious practices with their work. Don’t miss Sebastian Vallejo’s paintings that depict the vibrancy and color of the Caribbean, or the “satirical twist” in Jonathan Torres’ sculptures based on hybrid creatures that hang and melt along a canvas of nontraditional materials.

Vilaykorn Sayaphet's "Latmanikham & Thongsy" at English Kills (Image courtesy of the artist)

Frenetic in style, Vilaykorn Sayaphet's works possess a definite immediacy that is greatly influence by a number of various pop culture and art historical references; everything from AbEx to the city streets of New York. Possessing a dark and brooding sensibility, the Laos-born artist's paintings are sure to set the stage for the slightly melancholy shifting from summer to fall. To ease this transition, English Kills is turning the opening into a festive BBQ, so come enjoy these final warm nights with the festivities!